Fedora Extras

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 06:02:32 +0100, pdcoleman wrote:

> The fedora extras group seems to be aloof. There is no open community communication on, or testing of, extra packages.
> 

As a long-time contributor, let me disagree. The whole testing process at
fedora.us _is_ open. In http://bugzilla.fedora.us, package reviews are
posted before a package is built and published into a publicly
accessible "pending" repository.

  http://www.fedora.us/wiki/PackageSubmissionQAPolicy#verify

The community can subscribe to that channel and get news builds before
a package is moved into the main repository. Feedback on those
packages can be given any time. Apart from that, packages are
classified into stable/testing/unstable.

That this is not accompanied with high mailing-list traffic, is
because so far, package development focused on communicating via
bugzilla.

> I tend to favor the fedora core approach of rawhide and test release. This maximizes testing among those willing.
> 

I disagree once more. To me it seems, most package users are not
willing to do any testing before a package is ready. Hence the
"pending" repository and the different classifications of packages.
However, as users consider packages in "pending" not ready either,
the majority of users wait till something is published in "stable",
"testing" or "unstable", before they give it a try.

In the past, fedora.us had done mass-rebuilds of all packages against
one or two Fedora Core test releases. That allowed increased testing
prior to the next release of Fedora Core. With ongoing merger related
movements at fedora.us, the same wasn't done this time. Builds against
Rawhide would only make sense if the Extras packagers or enough
additional community contributors would follow Rawhide and develop
Extras accordingly.

We have yet to see what official Fedora Extras will bring with.  It is
rather obvious, that after using fedora.us as a testbed, official
Fedora Extras will result in some changes.

> With the extras group seeming to be closed society of packagers and self testers, I doubt if fedora is a true community.
> 

The word "seeming" hits it. Actually they are not a closed
society. Else other packagers and testers were unable to join.

-- 
Fedora Core release 3 (Heidelberg) - Linux 2.6.9-1.678_FC3
loadavg: 0.17 0.21 0.18
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